News! De Lijn, a Flemish bus company, is about to share its data with Google. This means you will be able to look up your trip on Google Maps and Google will return you the possibility of going by public … Continue reading →

When I’m writing code I’m quite regularly distracted by what-ifs… For instance: what if I’m on a train towards Spain and I boarded in Belgium. As I have a smartphone with an application installed (let’s call it BeTrains for iRail) which gives me real-time information on my trajectory, I don’t want BeTrains to be useless once I cross the border. BeTrains should automatically switch to the trainsystem of that country.

To achieve this the right way we need some other structures. Open data is one thing, but providing data in an open standard is even more important. Certainly for this particular case that I describe even better if you read the full story on my blog at http://bonsansnom.wordpress.com